we will see you again tomorrow night. until then, you can check out my work at wonkblog.com at "the washington post." now it is time for "the last word with lawrence o'donnell." have a great night. and just when you thought ohio was getting way too much attention in this presidential campaign, president obama and mitt romney have both decided to give big campaign speeches tomorrow, in ohio. >> the last thing we can do is return to the very policies that got us into this mess in the first place. >> the president will be making a speech on thursday. >> we'll hear what he has to say tomorrow. >> just goes back and blames president bush. >> what he called the failed policies of the past. >> to fix the damage done by president bush. >> in a major campaign speech -- >> the president will argue they would be worse off if mitt romney were in charge. >> nobody wants to hear him whining and complaining. you actually have to do

something. >> he has done stuff. >> question -- are you going to be better than you were four years from now? >> channel the gipper. >> they say we're all against things, we're never for anything. >> reagan-esque. >> there you go again. >> president reagan, excuse me. >> reagan's legacy is causing a bit of a fracture in the gop. >> ronald reagan would not necessarily pass the litmus test. >> president reagan -- excuse me. >> what can mitt romney do to appear more human? >> he's had a little trouble relating to joe six pack. >> an opportunity to insult some more small business owners on the quality of their cookies. >> first off, doughnuts, anyone? >> would you see if one of those chocolate -- one of those chocolate gooies finds its way -- >> doughnut, referred to as a chocolate goody. >> i'll be do some testing on that one right there. >> mitt is just your average blue-collar fan of drasage.

whoo! i just get swept up. tomorrow, president obama and mitt romney will deliver dueling speeches on the most important issue to voters in judging by the candidate's travel schedules, the most important state in the presidential election. the speeches on the economy will take place in ohio. president obama will speak in cleveland. mitt romney will speak in cincinnati. and mitt romney knows already which speech is going to sound better. >> he will speak eloquently, but the words are cheap. and that the record of an individual is the basis upon which you determine whether they should continue to hold on to their job. >> mitt romney himself has, of course, determined whether many people should continue to hold on to their jobs.

>> to get up on national tv and brag about making jobs, when he has destroyed thousands of people's careers, lifetimes, just destroying people. >> a new "washington post" poll shows dissatisfaction with both candidates' plans for the economy. 37% view mitt romney's plan for the economy favorably and 47% view it unfavorably. 43% view president obama's plan for the economy favorably and 50% view it unfavorably. joining me now is former chairman of the dnc and governor of vermont, howard dean, and msnbc political analyst, richard wolffe. governor dean, what does the president have to say tomorrow in ohio to get a little bit more approval for his economic plans? >> he needs to condense his economic message to three or four words, and then repeat them every single day between now and the election. people fundamentally don't trust mitt romney. they believe he only cares about people who have great wealth,

which is probably true. but the president's got to close the sale. and the way to close the sale is to have a slogan and repeat it and repeat it and repeat it and repeat it. he was doing very well right after the jobs speech. he needs to get back into that groove. >> well, let's listen to the groove he was in yesterday in baltimore. >> the private sector creating nearly 4.3 million new jobs in the last 27 months, over 800,000 jobs just this year alone. now, does this mean i'm satisfied? no. not when we've got so many folks who are still out there looking for work. >> when i hear governor romney say his 25 years in the private sector gives him a special understanding of how the economy works, my question is, why are you running with the same bad ideas that brought our economy to the brink of disaster? and we're here to say, we remember and we're not going back there! we're moving this country forward. >> richard wolffe, he seems to

strike the note in there, satisfied, no, while he's trying to suggest there has been progress, it is not satisfactory progress. >> right. and the hard thing is that, well, for starters, he's trying to be honest here. if he drew the parallel of president bush in 2004, he never actually said in 2004, you know, our security is not all it might be. you know, iraq could be going better and bin laden is still out there. what he actually said is, we are more secure now than we were four years ago. we are better off than we were pre-9/11. i have kept you safe. we have not been attacked again. this administration is trying to tell the story as it really is. and the truth is, if you take the reagan question, are you better off than you were four years ago, the answer is yes. the economy is not falling off a cliff. we're not losing 800,000 jobs a month. we're actually gaining them, albeit in smaller numbers than you'd like.

the stock market has rebounded from its lows. there are lots of things that are better than they were four years ago. but the administration is taking this tentative approach, because of all the polling and the focus grouping and everything else. i suspect if president bush had tried that approach in 2004, he'd have seemed a lot weaker against john kerry. >> let's listen to a worry of james carville's that's been getting a lot of attention. let's listen to. >> i'm worried that when the white house or the campaign talks about the progress that's being made, people take that as a signal that they think that things are fine. and people don't feel that or believe that. they want to be reassured that he understands the depth of the problem and that he has a plan to deal with the deterioration of the middle class. >> governor dean, that seems to be what the president is dealing with when he, in his speech says that we've had progress, but

he's not satisfied. is that the right way to balance the issue, as james carville's outlining it there? >> i think in terms of the speech, it's fine. but as i said earlier in the show, you have got to have three or four words. i think carville's reputation is built on, it's the economy, stupid. you've got to have three or four words and repeat them and again and again and again. so no amount of great speechifying and no amount of talking about the jobs that bush destroyed and so on and so on is going to really be effective. look, barack obama has an enormous advantage going into the selection. because most people do not trust the republicans and do not trust mitt romney in terms of their jobs. and that showed in the polling data that you gave a couple of minutes ago. but we've got to have a slogan on our side that's believable, and that's what they have to come up with. >> any thoughts on what that

slogan should be, governor? >> well, i mean -- no, not right here on short notice on the television. >> listen, i'm not good at this -- i'm not good at this either. i've never come up with any kind of slogan that would fit on a bumper sticker or work in campaign speeches. it's not an easy thing to do. >> no, it's not. >> i think you're right about the size of the bite. it's tricky in this situation to come up with what those words are. >> well, you could figure it out. it would take you about 24 hours to do it, and they've got some very smart people working for them, so i think i'll let them come up with their own slogan, but it's got to be short, it's got to talk about jobs, you know, we're noin but that's what it needs and it's got to be memorable. he's going to win this election, but he's got to put it away, and put it away now. >> richard wolffe, there's been more talk about a memo that

james carville put out, saying the voters are very sophisticated about the character of the economy. they know who is mainly responsible for what went wrong and they are hungry to hear the president talk about the future. there's some concern that the president should not be talking so much about what he inherited from george w. bush and mentioning bush by name, because the presumption there is everybody knows that, now let's tell us where you're going. >> well, look, the president has talked a lot about investments in the middle class, which is what carville and kerry seemed to do. by the way, carville is focused on the sort of empathy question. that's one of the president's strongest points. it's curious that he thinks that there's a worry that this president is going to seem out of touch when, if you just put up the head-to-head on who understands your problems and gets it, this president scores

much, much better than mitt romney and much better than any other figure on the national stage. i think, you know, to take the bush example once again, when it came down to the 2004 election, did you ever hear president bush or any of his surrogates not talk about the terrible events of 9/11? they had no problem dwelling on the awfulness of the past and saying that they had a plan, albeit, not a fully executed one when it came to iraq and national security. i don't see why the president should not talk about the past. that's his record. his record is as a turnaround guy. turning around an economy that was falling off a cliff and putting it back on track. you know, if he doesn't talk about that, then he's missing the entire framework of this election. so i don't know how he avoids it. >> howard dean, a lot of democrats are getting very nervous now that the polls are tightening. people always get nervous when the polls are tightening. and the polls always tighten. you, tonight, are very confident, still, that president obama's going to win this election. why are you so confident? >> because i think a lot of the angst that's generated, lawrence, is inside the beltway. james, god bless him, came here 20 years ago with bill clinton. he's been inside the beltway ever since. you get a lot of those kind of people talking and agonizing and ringing their hands. this election is going to be fought outside the beltway and the president's spending all his time outside the beltway. if you look at a state like ohio, the jobs are beginning to come back, because of the automobile industry. there's a huge difference between what mitt romney wanted to do to the automobile industry and what barack obama did do for the automobile industry.

so i think the president wins ohio, i think he wins virginia, and that's the end of mitt romney, right there, if he can just win those two states. it's very clear whose side barack obama is on. and it's not governor kasich, who is down in the 40s in approval because of the things that he's done while he's governor of ohio. the republican brand has been hurt badly there. obama needs to just get out and punch the way he can, the way he did for the first six months. >> howard dean and richard wolffe, thank you both for joining me tonight. >> thanks, lawrence. coming up, the myth of ronald reagan. reagan was not nearly conservative enough for today's republican party. so why do republicans keep pretending he's their hero? and in the "rewrite" tonight, another episode of who's the real american? the contestants, barack obama and mitt romney, and the category, sport. and in the next segment, the category will be food. you will watch mitt romney trying to figure out what a doughnut is. that's coming up.

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kids need to start admiring society's real heroes. job creators. that's why i'm calling for free market-affirming children's books, celebrating the 1%. what about "james and the giant year-end bonus"? or "green eggs and howard weinberg, senior vice president of global currency at goldman sachs"? have your kids read them. or you might need to read them to your kids. because if romney wins, we might be a little low on teachers. i'm curious about the word

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and cranberry almond crunch. to provide a better benefits package... oahhh! [ male announcer ] it made a big splash with the employees. [ duck yelling ] [ male announcer ] find out more at... [ duck ] aflac! [ male announcer ] ...forbusiness.com. ♪ ha ha! i'm curious about the word "envy." do you suggest that anyone who questions policies and practices of wall street and financial institutions, anyone who has questions about the distribution of wealth and power in this country is envious? is it about jealousy or is it about fairness? >> you know, i think it's about envy. i think it's about class warfare. i think when you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing america based on 99% versus 1% and those people have been most successful will be in

the 1%, you've opened up a whole new wave of approach to this country, which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under god. >> are there no fair questions about the distribution of wealth without it being seen as envy, though? >> you know, i think it's fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms. >> joining me now in tonight's quiet room segment, timothy noet, the author of the new book, "the great divergence: america's growing inequality crisis and what we can do about it." tim, before we get started on the book, my twitter question for my audience, which of my guests tonight is related to a former west wing writer, do you want to answer that for them? >> that would be me, actually. i am the brother of your former colleague on "the west wing," peter noah. >> there you go, the twitter people have their answer. tim, this notion of romney's that we really, we really

shouldn't be talking about what you have written a book about, where could that possibly come from? of course, the tax structure is about income distribution. there's so much that government's focus has been on for the better part of a century on this issue of income distribution, and romney doesn't seem to know that. >> well, this issue is a real loser for the republicans. they keep trying to figure out a way to come at this. first they tried to deny that the inequality trend existed. then they tried to say, well, it's justified by the fact that upward mobility in the states is so much swifter than elsewhere, which turns out to be not true. the u.s. lags other industrial democracies when it comes to mobility. finally they've just given up and said, let's just not talk about it at all. and when i hear talk about how sort of any discussion of class constitutes class warfare, i think to myself, geez, you know, these people really don't know what class warfare -- we had

real class warfare in the united states a hundred years ago, and, you know, there was bloodshed. you know, there were killings. i mean, that's warfare. this is discussion. >> and we've also had much, much higher tax rates. i mean, here you have republicans today saying it's class warfare. if you take what is now the top income tax rate and you push it up by 4.5 percentage points, they call that class warfare, if you push it up to 39%. we had rates, even when reagan was in office, that were much higher than that. >> oh, it's preposterous. they were 70% when reagan came in, twice what they are today. >> and they pushed them down to 50%, they pushed them down below that. but then if you go back into -- i remember, you know, when babe ruth was playing baseball, the top tax bracket cut in around $5 million. not these $100,000 maximum -- you know, top tax brackets measured in hundreds of thousands of dollars, where we are now. what happened to all of that progressivity we used to have in

the tax code, recognizing much, much higher incomes? >> well, it's interesting. tax is actually a complicated situation, because weirdly enough, the income tax is slightly more progressive today than it was in 1979. which is pretty amazing, considering how far down the top marginal rates have come. and that's because the people at the lower end have been taken off the tax rolls, which was a conservative idea to reward the working poor. now, of course, republicans want to put all those people back on the tax rolls. so the one good trend we've had in the midst of this growing income inequality, republicans want to eliminate. but, yes, i mean, we had a real long period from about 1934 to 1979 when incomes in the united states were growing more equal, not less equal, and there were a number of causes for that, but it had a lot to do with government policy. it had a lot to do with the rise of labor unions, and, you know, we had higher -- a growing high school graduation rate, which

leveled off in the 1970s. and, of course, we had some serious regulation of wall street, which started to deteriorate in the 1970s. >> and we also used to believe in trying to, as much as possible, pay for wars while we were raging them. during world war ii, we had wage and price controls in this can country, and fdr actually, and i learned this from your book, this i did not know, fdr actually tried to raise the top income tax rate to 100%. >> that's right. >> that was news to me, thanks to your book. tell us about that. >> yeah, he had instituted the first minimum wage about a decade before, and then during world war ii, he said there should be a maximum wage. i forget what the precise level was, but he said there was a point above which the marginal rate should be 100%. congress didn't let him do it, but the fact that a president would even raise such a notion gives you some idea of how different the political environment was back then. >> yeah, congress didn't let him

do it, but they compromised, in effect, at 94%, which became -- >> that's right. >> which became the top rate, up from 88. you know, fdr was saying the top rate is 88, but now in this situation, in war, we should really have 100% above, what was about, i believe, as i recall from the book, somewhere around the equivalent of $350,000 today. >> i think that's right. and that 90 -- you know, the rates stayed, the top marginal rates stayed above 90%, not just through world war ii, but through the 1950s and until the tax cut in 1964. and during those years, with a 90% top marginal tax rate, we had a level of prosperity that we would kill for today. >> and henry ford knew that the workers in his factory had to make enough money to be able to buy the product that was rolling out of his factory, in order for his business to grow and be as successful as he dreamed of it being. what has happened to that understanding of consumer demand being the real driver of our

economy, being the real job creator of our economy, and you can't have consumer demand without significantly better distributed middle class incomes. >> that's right. well, that idea has gone out the window. and there's very little concern for the welfare of middle and lower income workers on the part of bosses. the unions, you know, union density was about 40% back in the 1950s. it's dwindled down in the private sector to 7%. only 7% of the workforce, private workforce, is unionized today. you know, there's very little interest in what happens at the middle, which is very ironic to me, because, you know, we hear an awful lot about how the job creators at the top need to be incentivized. but there's no talk about why the middle income worker doesn't need to be incentivized. middle incomes have been stagnant, actually declined slightly over the last dozen years, and stagnant over the past 33 years, relative to the period before. there's very little concern about that. and you know, i'm worried that

workers at the median will feel no great motivation to improve their productivity, as they have done spectacularly in the last decade. they haven't seen any benefit from it, personally. you know, where's the benefit? >> timothy noah, brother of peter noah and columnist for the "new republic," and most importantly, the author of the new book that mitt romney is hoping you cannot afford to buy, "the great divergence: america's growing inequality crisis and what we can do about it," timothy, thank you very much for joining me tonight. >> thank you, lawrence. coming up, the romney campaign uses a diner in iowa to stage a phony roundtable discussion and while they're at it, the romney staff trashed the diner. you'll hear from the owner of the diner and see more video of mitt romney in his struggle to be human. and in the "rewrite" tonight, barack obama has been known to play a game of e nd mi romney owns a horse that may be on its way to the olympics,

which once again raises, and we think answers, the question, who's the real american? that's in tonight's "rewrite." the republican party and in the "rewrite" tonight, barack obama has been known to play a game of horse on the basketball court and mitt romney owns a horse that may be on its way to the olympics, which once again raises, and we think answers, the question, who's the real american? that's in tonight's "rewrite." do you read in bed? do you read out loud or in your head? do you need a lamp to see? and does it leave your bedmate be? don't you wish there was a light that wouldn't keep them up all night? if so, you'll be happy to know, our newest nook now comes with glow.

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the republican party continues to worship ronald reagan, but that's because most of the worshippers have no idea what ronald reagan actually did as governor or president, like, you know, raise taxes, as well as cut taxes. they only remember the tax cutting. ronald reagan would have been attacked in this year's republican presidential primary as a tax-raising liberal from california. the myth of reagan is coming up. and president obama and mitt romney are in the "rewrite" tonight. we will examine each man's chosen sport. president obama's favorite is the purely american sport of basketball, invented in massachusetts. mitt romney prefers the ancient and profoundly un-american sport of dressage.

guess who wins in tonight's episode of who's the real american? that's coming up. ronald reagan would not put up with what's going on here today, because there's no question that ronald reagan, country came first, not elections. >> in the spotlight tonight, romney as reagan. earlier this week, jeb bush questioned whether either his father, george h.w. bush, or ronald reagan, could get the republican presidential nomination today, saying, back to my dad's time and ronald reagan's time, they got a lot of stuff done with a lot of bipartisan support. reagan would be criticized for doing the things that he did. some republicans took issue with there's another way to help erase litter box odor. purina tidy cats. only tidy cats has new odor erasers... making it easy to keep things at home... just the way you want them. new tidy cats with odor erasers.

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what's your policy? ronald reagan would not put up with what's going on here today, because there's no

question that ronald reagan, country came first, not elections. >> in the spotlight tonight, romney as reagan. earlier this week, jeb bush questioned whether either his father, george h.w. bush, or today's republican party most likely would not have voted for ronald reagan in the republican primaries of 1980. that includes jeb bush." >> how does he know that? >> well, i think erick erickson is an utter fool. why anybody pays any attention to him is a complete mystery to me. but i think one has to remember, i mean, the world is a different place today than it was in 1980. we had different problems back then. and this is one of the problems i have with many of today's

republicans, that they believe in cookie cutter policies. you should just do the same thing, always, year in, year out, the same identical policies, regardless of whether the economic conditions are the same. and i think that that is where a key area, where people simply don't understand the difference. >> sam stein, we can, i think, also imagine that the mitt romney of 1980 could not possibly have gotten nominated. the mitt romney of 1994 could not have gotten nominated. the mitt romney of 2000 -- the mitt romney who used to be pro-choice and so forth. so you could play this game the other way, seeing how recently mitt romney's positions were absolutely impossible to clear in a republican presidential -- >> well, keep in mind, in 1994, ronald reagan was too conservative for mitt romney. he famously said he didn't want to go back to reagan/bush. but, obviously, there's been an evolution since then. you know, the way mitt romney governed in the context of this

conversation was somewhat similar to what we're discussing about reagan. i mean, he did use tax increases. they were called fees in massachusetts to help close the budget loophole. that is,, you know -- and that's caused him a lot of problems with his conservative base and it's something he's generally shied away from talking about, because like every other republican on the stage, he's said he wouldn't vote for a debt ceiling increase that was 10 to one spending cuts versus tax hikes. yes, the evolution has happened. it's not been since '94 to now, it's been since 2000 to now. >> and bruce, there's been an evolution in the politics of campaigning for governors, where they're willing to say, yeah, we shouldn't raise the debt ceiling, let's risk default, all these kind of things, which would have been absolutely inconceivable to ronald reagan, wouldn't it? >> of course ronald reagan signed into law a number of increases to the debt limit, and statements he made that were quite eloquent as to why that

was necessary. and obviously there's a lot of hypocrisy going on here. but i do think that ronald reagan would be out of step with today's republican party. >> bruce bartlett and sam stein, thank you both for joining me tonight. >> thanks, lawrence. coming up, stephen colbert, mitt romney, and president obama are in tonight's episode of who's the real american? the categories in tonight's contest are sport and food. you will see mitt romney trying to figure out what a doughnut is. that's coming up. this is an announcement now about the governor and [ male announcer ] this is the at&t network...

a living breathing intelligence bringing people together to bring new ideas to life. look. it's so simple. [ male announcer ] in here, the right minds from inside and outside the company come together to work on an idea.

adding to it from the road, improving it in the cloud all in real time. good idea. ♪ it's the at&t network -- providing new ways to work together, so business works better. ♪ this is an announcement now

about the governor and marijuana, and look how it's already being exploited. watch this. >> new york governor andrew cuomo has proposed decriminalizing the private possession of small amounts of marijuana. andrew cuomo, the right choice for president in 2012. >> a message from frito lay, makers of doritos, cheetos, tostitos and ruffles lay's potato chips. in tonight's "rewrite," another episode of who's the t . t . i know better nutrition when i see it: great grains. great grains cereal starts whole and stays whole. see the seam? more processed flakes look nothing like natural grains. you can't argue with nutrition you can see. great grains. search great grains and see for yourself. for multi grain flakes that are an excellent source of fiber try great grains banana nut crunch and cranberry almond crunch.

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in tonight's "rewrite," another episode of who's the real american? tonight's contestants are barack obama and mitt romney and tonight's category is sport. the romney sport dates back to 400 bc with a multi-national heritage that isn't even remotely american. it was invented by the greeks and given a french name -- dressage. and this is mitt romney we're talking about, so he doesn't actually play the sport himself, he hires someone to do it for him. and that someone rides the dressage horse that mitt romney owns, a horse that just might be taking mitt romney back to the olympics. >> the old romney luck continues. the romney's horse might go to the olympics! though one would imagine, it's going to be a long drive to london on top of their station wagon. now, their horse, refalca is competing at the united states equestrian federation national dressage championships in gladstone, new jersey, as if you don't know from your equestrian

fantasy league. folks, this is exactly what mitt needs. he's had a little trouble relating to joe six pack. just listen to him talking about basketball. >> i met a guy yesterday, 7 feet tall. i figured he had to be in sport, but he wasn't in sport. >> yes! the tall man was not in sport. neither bounce ball nor oblong leather zeppelin toss. jim, show us refalca at sport. ♪ whoo! whoo! whoo-hoo! refalc, number one! refalca, number one! go, refalca! and folks -- perfect hair! and folks, lest you think the horse is doing all the work, mitt picks the music himself. at this year's world cup, he chose a selection of songs from the soundtrack to "rain man." clearly, mitt envies rain man's ability to connect with people. folks, in support of mitt romney, i am making dressage the official colbert report sport of the summer. so, kids -- so, nation, sing it with me, the official seventh inning anthem of dressage. ♪ take me out to the horse ring, take me out to dressage ♪

♪ buy me some johdpurrs and a velvet hat, i don't care if the orchestra's flat ♪ ♪ let me softly clap for the home horse, because if he don't win he'll be glue ♪ play port! >> and barack obama's sport is basketball. which was invented in springfield, massachusetts, in 1891. all the rest of our sports are modifications of sports invented elsewhere. baseball obviously more from cricket. american football, more from soccer and rugby. and so tonight's winner of who's the real american in the sport category is the man who plays our mostly truly american sport, basketballer, barack obama. >> i may not make the first one, though. but i'll make one eventually. >> get in! that's it! good evening. i'm chris matthews in washington. let me start tonight with this.

the summer. so, kids -- so, nation, sing it with me, the official seventh inning anthem of dressage. ♪ take me out to the horse ring, take me out to dressage ♪ ♪ buy me some johdpurrs and a velvet hat, i don't care if the orchestra's flat ♪ ♪ let me softly clap for the home horse, because if he don't win he'll be glue ♪ play port! >> and barack obama's sport is basketball. which was invented in springfield, massachusetts, in

1891. all the rest of our sports are modifications of sports invented elsewhere. baseball obviously more from cricket. american football, more from soccer and rugby. and so tonight's winner of who's the real american in the sport category is the man who plays our mostly truly american sport, basketballer, barack obama. >> i may not make the first one, though. but i'll make one eventually. >> get in! that's it! tdd# 1-800-345-2550 let's talk about the personal attention

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> the next category in tonight's who's the real american contest is food. here's mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call a doughnut. >> garrett, would you see that one of those chocolate, uh -- uh, those chocolate goodies finds its way into our -- >> these haven't been approved for consumption like -- >> well, i'm going to be some testing on that one right there. >> well, that was martian mitt romney at the main street cafe in council bluffs, iowa, for a staged roundtable discussion last friday. romney, who would never mistake a brioche for a croissant may have lost votes in the main street cafe, because according to diane dwyer, the owner of the main street cafe, the romney staff broke stuff, while setting up, including a keepsake from her father.

she told a local tv station that mitt romney didn't even bother to say hello to her. when that story broke, romney gave bower a call to try and smooth things over. >> he responded, well, i'm sorry that your tablecloths got ripped off, wadded up, and thrown in the back room, and i took it as a mocking. is that how he's going to treat others? you know, if he gets in office, is he going to be that way to us little people? it just leaves you a bad taste. you don't want to have them back. >> joining me now, someone i always want to have back, jonathan capehart of "washington post" opinion writer and msnbc political analyst. jonathan, it was one of those romney robot moments, where he's staring at a doughnut. and he just -- the man doesn't know what it is, jonathan. how could that happen? >> well, maybe he does know what it is, but realized that the word he was going to say would not be one he should probably use, as a presidential candidate, such as kruler, or

eclair. how you forget doughnut is beyond me. but, you know, look, he's been on the campaign trail for a long time, he's there with people he doesn't know. maybe i'll give him a little pass on that. we all have those brain freezes every once in a while. >> and you know, this is, of course, is a woman who runs her cafe in iowa, so she's had presidential campaigns before. >> right. >> she actually said she was expecting romney to be like rick perry, who she said, and i'm going to quote her here, made a point of stopping in the kitchen before he ever went to the other side to address the public and the media, to thank us and introduce himself. i mean, that is -- the basic politician knows this, and as rick perry shows you, you do not have to be the smartest politician in america to know that that's your first move when you go into a place like that. >> right. and the most courteous politician is the one who does it. i mean, to this day, if you go

to new york city, to any of the big hotels there where president clinton has ever been during his tenure as president, they will all rave about him, because he always took the time to shake everyone's hand, take pictures, say hello. that's what you do. because you're disrupting -- you're disrupting their work. and, you know, they're putting themselves aside so that you can make your way through. the idea that mitt romney didn't have time to say hello to diane, is her name, yes, diane and her husband, earl, to say hello to them, to say thank you for allowing me in your business, for closing off part of your business to allow me to hold this press availability, where i won't be able to remember the name of the confection that you're selling, is -- it's really poor form. you don't want a diane bower in iowa or michigan or ohio or florida or pennsylvania to have that idea of you, that you're just this hoity-toity look down

your noise kind of guy coming into your establishment and, you know, treating you poorly. >> and it's not just her customers who might hear about it. she was on tv news in iowa, you know, pretty much half the state probably saw her talking about this, which is much more effective than any super pac anti-romney commercial. >> right. again, you don't want a diane bower in any -- in iowa, anywhere, quite frankly, but in iowa or any swing state talking bad about you. and especially when you're a candidate who everyone is looking at, in your own party, views you as just this odd guy who they just acquiesce and say, fine, we'll make you the nominee. sure, go ahead. >> jonathan capehart, who knows a doughnut when he sees one, thank you very much for joining me tonight, jonathan. >> thanks, lawrence. >> you can have the last word online at our blog, thelastword.msnbc.com, and you can follow my tweets online @lawrence, even the tweets i was